
Image: Thinkstock.
Let’s be real.
We’re all guilty of breaking at the occasional beauty commandment.
Maybe you’ve slept in your make up after a long night out, neglected to fix those chipped nails, or thrown some foundation on your hands and applied it to your face like it’s sunscreen.
There are some rules you can afford to break occasionally. But there are also some basic rules that you probably shouldn’t.
1. Not double cleansing your face if you wear makeup.
Cleansing your face once at night is fine, if you don’t wear any make up.
But if we’re being truthful, cleansing once is probably not enough to remove your makeup and cleanse your face. Cleanse once to remove the face of the day, and cleanse the skin underneath. If your face is left feeling tight after cleansing, you’re probably using the wrong product for your skin type.
And please, for the love of sparkly things, remove your make up before you go to bed. Keep a packet of cleansing wipes next to your pillow if you have to. Otherwise you’re just asking for breakouts.
Here is my cleanser of choice:
2. Pulling the skin on your eyelid when applying eyeliner.
This is one I'm sure all of us are guilty of, because it's just so much easier to get a straight line!
However, the skin around your eyelids is super thin and stretches easily. Manhandling it every day by pulling and tugging while applying eyeliner is only going to invite those crows feet to settle on your face much faster than you'd like.
How to nail winged eyeliner (using tape)
3. Not checking the expiry on your make up.
Makeup, just like food, has an expiry date. And did you know it's actually printed on the packaging?
Look for these symbols to tell you exactly when you should ditch the goods. 12M = 12 months.
You've probably seen these symbols a thousand times and not known what they meant. Now you do.
Keeping makeup longer than you should is not going to do you any favours. After a while, the preservatives in the formations stop working and it's basically an open invitation for bacteria to take up residence. This is NOT something you want to be smothering all over your face.
4. Not washing your makeup brushes.
This is another sure fire way to have a bacteria party on your face.
Ideally, you should be washing your brushes at least once a week. Use a speciality brush cleaner like MAC's Brush Cleanser, baby shampoo or even try making your own.
In between washes, you can spritz the brushes with rubbing alcohol decanted into a small spray bottle to kill any nasties that may be hanging out.
5. Over exfoliating your skin, or not exfoliating at all.
Believe it or not, not exfoliating your skin, and over exfoliating your skin are just as bad as each other.